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This study investigates the discursive construction of identity in the largely neglected register of evaluative journal articles (e.g., critiques, rebuttals). The study looks at how disciplinary identity is constructed in this register through the use of the subjective first-person pronoun I from a Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) perspective. This is done through the analysis of: (1) the variation of I in evaluative journal articles across six disciplines (i.e., Applied Linguistics, Biology, History, Philosophy, Physics, Political Science) and (2) the process types (e.g., material, mental) that authors use with I to construct a particular disciplinary identity. Findings show that social science and humanities authors use I much more frequently than hard science authors, but also that the frequency of I in the hard sciences is not negligible when compared to previous research. Another important finding is that disciplinary differences are reflected in both the frequency and use of process types. The findings are highly relevant for teaching graduate students discipline-appropriate ways of identity construction in evaluative registers, such as critiques. • Hard and soft fields differ in terms of identity projection in evaluative texts. • It is not uncommon for hard science authors to use I in evaluative writing. • Process types help identify differences in the use of I across disciplines. • Material processes are the most commonly used process type in hard sciences. • Mental processes are the most commonly used process type in humanities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graduate students are often thought of as mature researchers capable of figuring things out on their own, but they face special challenges in developing as novice scholars. This study adopts the lens of socialization and uses semi-structured interviews with dissertating graduate students in the humanities and social sciences at a large public research university to investigate how they understand their own practices of skills development, information seeking, networking, and forging a professional identity. It finds that students face considerable ambiguity in terms of expectations for the dissertation and whom they can go to for help, and that many needs are not being met by their home departments. The existence of these unmet needs and variability in where students get help imply that there is a space for librarians to become a part of the developmental support networks of even advanced graduate students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates how the macrostructure patterns (MSPs) of research articles (RAs) are distributed across different disciplines. The investigation is based on the Elsevier OA CC-BY corpus consisting of 76,835 RAs from 26 disciplines coming from Health Sciences (HS), Social Sciences and Humanities (SH), Life Sciences (LS), and Physical Sciences and Engineering (PE). In this study, we identify 72 salient patterns and show that a higher ratio of functional headings is found in HS, LS, and PE than in SH, which can be attributed, in part, to different emphases with respect to the knowledge mode and knower mode (Maton, 2009). In addition, we explore the connection between specific MSPs and particular fields. We also detail the wide distribution of the I_M_R_D pattern; it appears in the top 10 pattern list for 21 out of the 26 disciplines, and is particularly frequent in medical journals. In sum: this large corpus-based study provides a comprehensive picture of how MSPs vary across RAs from different disciplines and fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Critical thinking is a key learning outcome of higher education but is often overlooked in favour of discipline-specific knowledge. • We found a high degree of consensus between the UK and US instructors across the humanities and social sciences. • Instructors ranked analysis, evaluation, and interpretation as the most important critical thinking skills. • Instructors reported using implicit, dialogue-based approaches to teach critical thinking. Critical thinking features in university syllabi, programmes, and classes both in the UK and US and is considered one of the primary learning outcomes of higher education. Yet empirically we still know very little about how critical thinking is taught or the extent to which teaching practice is informed by academic research. Further work is needed to understand teaching practice across disciplines through the light of critical thinking research. In the present study, we surveyed 176 UK and US university instructors from a range of humanities and social sciences subjects about their teaching practices. The instructors ranked ten critical thinking skills drawn from the research literature and they identified the approaches and learning activities that they used to teach critical thinking. The key findings showed that there was broad consensus in the critical thinking skills that instructors considered most important (analysis, evaluation, and interpretation) and the skills that they considered least important (creativity, deductive reasoning, description, and problem-solving). The findings were similar irrespective of subject taught or country of instruction. We also found that instructors were more likely to report teaching critical thinking with an implicit approach as opposed to an explicit approach, and that instructors reported using dialogue-based activities to develop critical thinking. We use these findings to consider how we can further 'close the gap' between critical thinking research and teaching practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]